Born and raised speaking French Creole in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, Baptiste, 29, writes all his songs in Spanish. He moved to Chile after Haiti’s devastating earthquake in 2010, with dreams of a music career in tow.
“To get to audiences in Chile you have to sing in Spanish. They’ve never heard anything in French or Creole. I had to adapt,” he said.
Adapt—he says the word as if it is inherently natural to him. Baptiste has had to adapt daily to be accepted in his new homeland. Beat by beat, over nine years of performances, he built a name for himself, and in 2019, Baptiste was finally able to release his first album, Rafa.
Musicians have always been a nomadic sort, and Baptiste is no different. He had spent time in the Dominican Republic, where he learned Spanish, so after the earthquake struck, Baptiste chose to pursue his music in Latin America — unlike the 46,000 displaced Haitians who sought asylum in the United States He settled in Chile after short stints in Peru and Argentina.
Baptiste was among the first in what would become a surge of Haitian migrants in Chile. The country had granted fewer than a 1,000 visas to Haitians between 2005 and 2009, and when Baptiste arrived in 2010, only 713 Haitians received Chilean working visas — a marked difference from 2018, when 126,000 were granted.
